Greater Israel Watch

Another blow to any two-state solution in the Middle East comes courtesy of an Israeli judicial committee's ruling that the West Bank isn't occupied at all – but an integral part of Israel. The decision is non-binding, but it's at least a helpful light into the bleeding obvious – that the Jewish state has no intention of returning to internationally-recognized borders and is intent on full-scale annexation of the West Bank, with Palestinians forced out or walled into racial and religious townships, with even their basic supplies, such as water, always dependent on the good will of Israelis. This is the honest part:

The Levy report said the outposts now deemed unauthorized were established with the knowledge and encouragement of Israel’s most senior government echelons, concluding that this amounted to “implied agreement.”

The release of the report was exquisitely timed to tell the world powers, including America, to go pull a Cheney:

Palestinian officials noted that the report was published on the anniversary of the July 9, 2004, advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, which determined that Israel’s construction of its barrier across the 1967 boundary, in West Bank territory, violated international law.

But adopting the report's proposals may not be in Netanyahu's interests, either, as he continues his policy of pretending to be open to a two-state solution while doing all he can to render it a permanent impossibility. Formally denying any actual occupation of the West Bank would, moreover, expose the de facto reality of Greater Israel's ambitions:

The report might be seen as an anti-Balfour Declaration: a political statement, which, if implemented as written, would ensure that Israel can no longer continue in a meaningful sense to be a “Jewish state,” except by systematic ethnic discrimination against large parts of its population. There's a word for such a system: Apartheid.